The series was created by Rowan Joffé and stars Tim Roth in a dual role as both gentle police chief Jim Worth and his violent alter-ego Jack Devlin, which emerges when he drinks alcohol.

Filming for the first series took place in Alberta, Canada, from June to December 2016, with scenes mainly shot in the town of High River, located just south of Calgary, as well as in Waterton and Dorothy.

For its third and final series, subtitled 'Tin Star: Liverpool', the setting moved from Canada to Liverpool, England, with production commencing in 2019 and release in December 2020.

When Amazon released series 2 internationally, it split the original feature-length season premiere 'Prairie Gothic' (1 hour 20 minutes) into two separate episodes, with the second part retitled 'Something Wicked This Way Comes', causing the episode numbering to differ from the original Sky Atlantic broadcast.

The series premiered on Sky Atlantic on 7 September 2017 in the UK before becoming available internationally on Amazon Video later that month, on 29 September.